Bromcom_Jay

And we are still waiting for the installers...

Not worried... Tactics to try and get users to stay with SIMS as long as possible, thought something big was going to be announced, nope more delaying tactics. I hope when Bromcom announce a new product that is a year in the development they get a sticky here on EduGeek! Jay

Hey everyone - just miscommunication, Bromcom are a technical partner with SIMS and have been for many years. We are still waiting for the installers from SIMS for the Spring update and every day we wait for SIMS to give us the installers the migration is delayed for the school, so we got in contact with the school and the local authority to try and speed things up. We should have this all sorted now. Jay

I don't know if we have met Banjo - but some could take that personally... :-P Will have to arrange a coffee to see if I can't convince you we are all nice guys and gals!

The data migration at Bromcom isn't automated, it is a real guy (Mike) and his team, they test it, pass the majority of the data back to a school to test, then while they are playing with that we complete the migration of data and finally update the system with it all once they want to go 'live.' - I agree, it is a bit of a dream to have a fully automated system, until all MIS suppliers have the same formats. I think that should be the aim, along with all the admin and 'back-end' work, you should only need a quick word with helpdesk to get the answers you need. Obviously not one MIS system is there yet, but we can work on that!!

Okay - I could be a bit controversial here... As a personal user of all kinds of ICT, the world I live in is in the cloud - G-Suite for all my personal documents (haven't used Microsoft office since I finished Uni in 2010), I have an android phone and Chromebook, Chromecast and Netflix account, I've not plugged my TV into the aerial socket in my house since I moved in. Businesses should be seeing the benefits from Cloud, with cheaper costs (storage, licence, connectivity), better hardware and software choices and no longer having a legacy perpetual licence. As an MIS supplier, we are 100% behind Cloud, but we understand that in some instances a locally hosted system may be a better choice - areas with terrible internet connections being the main one! When the country catches up with the technology, broadband, '5G' etc. then schools will see the full benefit of cloud, but I have to admit currently, the whole country isn't quite there. The initial training costs and staff time to adapt to a change will limit how often schools change MIS - I change my utility provider every year to the cheapest, but all I do is say I want to switch and I get an emailed bill with a different provider logo at the top. The aim for Bromcom is for the system to be so intuitive you don't need much training if any - similar to switching from an android phone to an iPhone, you don't need training you can find your way around. Migrating data should be as easy as giving one MIS provider access to the database and they just swap it over for you, that's how we do it at Bromcom. You should have the ability to transfer all of the data across with no hassle and no limit to how far back the data goes - 5 years is normally standard, but if you want to go back 20 years if the data is there it can be transferred... Then why would you need access to the old system or database? In reply to the original post about league tables - loving the info from @GREED - something I will be looking at a lot! The market share will be dominated by the biggest player for years to come, contracts that have been around for years, quick renewals with LA's and schools, the huge number of consultants and staff focused on it, it won't disappear overnight. But smaller players are gaining more schools and Scholarpack is a good sign that with a tailored cloud MIS system that does the job and fits the people using it, it will spread quickly. If the latest release of a MAT analysis tool from the biggest market share is anything to go by, if they keep developing tools which just about do the job, but only work with their software and anyone else trying to develop something can't access the data they need or the price to be a 3rd party will be too high - nothing will change. Jay

I think the only one that hasn't been mentioned is entry sign - we have a whole host of schools on both inVentry and some on entry sign. Could be worth checking if the e-registration system can integrate with your current MIS and if that would be an extra cost? Good luck in finding the perfect one :-)

I'd investigate everything that is out there now - Even though you are not officially a MAT it sounds like you want similar analysis and reporting abilities. At Bett a whole load of suppliers either had a MAT/LA dashboard analysis style system, some were generic, some were for specific MIS suppliers or a way of just looking at everything with a single sign on style set up. It could be worth contacting a local MAT to yourselves to see if they have a solution or if any MATs on edugeek have something. Good luck with the search!

Actually Bromcom were the first cloud based MIS ever in 2001...

I have passed this feedback on and have gathered some more information - at all of our user group meetings, the customer support homepage and during the free monthly webinars we will be updating users on future updates and what we are working on currently. The next update - cloud or local - has an update to one module which we are asking users when they would like to update, not just letting them try to get on with it! We have had a personnel change in the software development team and the road map has been neglected. I will have one in the next week and will ensure all users can find it on the support site. As I am new to the company I am endeavouring to get my head around the current way we do things, but also offer insight on how to move forward - feedback from edugeek is definitely passed on and so is all feedback from users - so keep passing information on. pcstru - you are welcome to PM me if you have any specific queries, as is any user on edugeek - I can't promise I will know everything straight away, but I can find the answer! Jay

Strawdog - These are the outages I have recorded from our side, as mentioned previously, having only been at Bromcom since 14th October I don't know of all instances. Every individual school will undoubtedly have their own records and I'd encourage any school to make sure as soon as the system isn't performing it's best to flag up a support ticket and ask the team to look into it. It is true from the information we have, on the 16th the cloud system was still working, I understand it was due to an unusual amount of processing - reports from many schools was the system was slow, but still usable. On the 14th, the time recorded where nothing happened was only 20 minutes. We were also using the system for in house training and we couldn't access it for 20 mins, but then it was working. I wasn't trying to mislead anyone - we have had issues with access, we are improving it and I would urge anyone to ask other Bromcom users for feedback, I was also illustrating similar issues could come up with locally hosted systems, which can cost a lot more and have other implications a cloud hosted system could solve.

Hey pcstru, Important feedback that I haven't heard from our users (although I have only been at Bromcom 1 month). I will make sure the powers that be understand what you are saying. It is worth pointing out that Bromcom has had 1 day of slow speed (16/11/16), 20mins of outage on Monday 14th (at around 3pm) and one half day of outage last month. That is everything ever - with better planning of technical upgrades and by tackling the issues we have encountered, we can't see any reason why it shouldn't continue to perform as normal in the forseeable future. I think the advantages of going cloud outweigh a couple of network issues, if you are hosted locally you could have had a half day out and some slow speeds yourself at some point in the last 5 years? Keep the feedback coming though! Jay

From Bromcom's support front page: "Bromcom has been vigorously working on reviewing and improving our SQL database solution to eradicate the risks we experienced with the October outage. These have been progressing successfully. The slow performance experienced yesterday was due to an SQL indexing problem that our tech department and the team at Microsoft are working to resolve. Whilst it did not affect all our cloud customers, we are now aware that many were affected. Overnight we have returned SQL indices to their state before we had performance problems and have re-indexed. So far system performance is performing without any issue and we have no reason to believe this will change. Rest assured that our performance monitoring is on-going and we are working to enhance the monitoring and to publicise the cloud status on our support site. On behalf of all the team at Bromcom we sincerely apologise for any interruption and inconvenience this may have caused our users, but our aim is to strengthen the cloud and its performance to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Simon Lewin Head of Customer Relations"

We have actually just completed the first automated online census with a MAT and are looking at 10 schools with all the information online and in one place, so integrated reports and side by side comparison is easier.